Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

by Ronald Blythe

Ronald Blythe lived at the end of an overgrown farm track deep in the rolling countryside of the Stour Valley, on the border between Suffolk and Essex. His home was Bottengoms Farm, a sturdy yeoman's house once owned by the artist John Nash. From here, Blythe spent almost half a century observing the slow turn of the agricultural year, the church year and village life in a series of rich, lyrical rural diaries.

Beginning with the arrival of snow on New Year's Day and ending with Christmas carols sung in the village church, Next to Nature invites us to witness a simple life richly lived. With gentle wit and keen observation Blythe meditates on his life and faith, on literature, art and history, and on our place in the landscape.

It is a celebration of one of our greatest nature writers, and an unforgettable ode to the English countryside.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Essays, Memoir, British Literature, History, Autobiography

467 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 27, 2022

About the author

Ronald Blythe CBE was one of the UK's greatest living writers. His work, which won countless awards, includes Akenfield (a Penguin 20th-Century Classic and a feature film), Private Words, Field Work, Outsiders: A Book of Garden Friends and numerous other titles. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded their prestigious Benson Medal in 2006. In 2017, he was appointed CBE for services to literature

Reviews

[Lisa - *OwlBeSatReading* · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading in 2026 - a chapter a month for the whole year, as I now own this delightful book!

✨🌳🌱✨🌳🌱✨

I didn’t want this to end! I borrowed Next to Nature from the library just over three months ago and renewed it four times just to keep it that little bit longer as it became my companion.

Ronald Blythe was a man of many words, beautiful, lyrical words which would sit in my head comfortably and give me so much joy. His ability to engage has made me feel as though I’ve spent the last quarter of 2024, and the start of the new year sat with him (and his white cat!) in his country garden at Bottengoms Farm, watching the seasons change and the agricultural year go by.

Next to Nature begins with the arrival of snow on New Year’s Day and ends with Christmas carols being sung at the village church.

I have learnt and understood more about the Christian faith and Bible stories than if I were to have read The Bible itself. (I’ve tried numerous times, and found it difficult to grasp, and, dare I say, a little boring?! 🥴) The way in which Blythe connects the farming year, natures ways, art, poetry and the community spirit of the countryside in the Stour Valley into such a calming and spiritual place is nothing short of remarkable.

I reluctantly returned this to the library knowing I need to own this book so I can pick it up as and when I feel the need. This book was my therapy and it will be sorely missed until I get my copy, which will be soon.

5 ⭐️ - Brilliant. I loved it.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got “Next to Nature” for Christmas 2022 and started reading through its monthly collections of essays in January. I finished the final entry—New Year’s Eve—this morning. I seldom read any book for an entire year so Ronnie, as he was known to his many friends, has felt like a companion throughout 2023. Poignantly, he turned 100 in November 2022 and died just two months later, so this book and my careful reading of it through the year are both tributes to his long and faithful life, much of it lived in an old farmhouse in Suffolk.

Each essay is a small masterpiece, a finely wrought miniature. Ronnie brings us alongside his days of writing, gardening, and living in rural England. He brings us to his local parish churches as he preaches, reads Scripture, and sings, whether the organist has shown up or not. He makes the authors he loves feel like friends full of wisdom and warmth, kindred spirits through their words. And thus does Ronnie himself become the same as his beloved George Herbert and Thomas Hardy: a companion through the tragedy and beauty of human life and a witness to a world charged with the grandeur of God.

I’m going to be bereft in 2024 without his near-daily voice.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a 2022 Christmas present, signed by the centenarian author, now no longer with us, alas, having died in January of this year. It is a selection of Blythe’s regular columns for the Church Times, covering many years and arranged by month. I decided to read each month’s entries at the beginning of each month of 2023, which has undoubtedly been the best approach as it has made this wonderful book last a whole year. Blythe is of course best known for Akenfield, his oral history of a small Suffolk community, and, as someone as deeply rooted in just such a community as Blythe was, the pieces gathered together in Next to Nature have a remarkable immediacy and honesty of experience and expression. He writes beautifully and with great sensitivity about the life of village, church and the natural world. He really is a great writer, and I must read more of his prolific output.

[Alex Sarll]

"New Year brought the ghosts out. The melancholy ever-rolling stream of Time through dark old rooms, the tilting photographs of past incumbents in damp vestries, the melting ice in dank shrubberies, the unwanted (or possibly longed for) companion catching one up in the foggy lane, and history seen as a medieval box of fun holy tricks to poke about in, these were among the experiences of January."
I started this in March, and was playing catch-up until October, but really it would have worked much better read month by month; it's only a shame that there isn't quite an entry per day. The structure is perfect, compiling Blythe's columns from the Church Times by date, but not by year, so that we read through the circular time of the natural and ecclesiastical year, without altogether knowing where we are in a linear time that seems far less significant out in this little patch of the old rural England, where any self-respecting village needs something to hang dreadful stories on; Borley Rectory was just down the road, and "This was a Mabey walk to rival his walk with me to Wormingford Mere where, although I don't like to boast, we have a dragon." Not that it's all hauntings, or at least not unfriendly ones; Blythe's bedroom is John Nash's old studio, and "I have lived most of my days under Gainsborough's and Constable's trees, and not figuratively; for many of them go on growing." Occasionally one is lost, bringing mourning as surely as a villager passing on, and truth be told, these aren't the only intrusions of that other, less forgiving time: "in the market town, the stone griffins on the church tower maintain their watch, seeing off goblins and foul fiends. I sense a new feeling of things not being as prosperous as they were." James, Holst, Coleridge are still presences, death notwithstanding, but the fields grow ever emptier of people, the villages more and more separate from their surroundings - something Blythe laments, even while being old enough to be well aware of the privations that came with agricultural life as it used to be. John Clare covertly reading in a field crops up more than once, as also Jesus' epitaph for John the Baptist; a little repetition is perhaps inevitable given the structure of the book, though I suspect not solely because of that, given Blythe's occasional admission of parishioners catching him out. Still, he seems to have been regarded with enormous fondness, each month introduced by a famous friend of 'Ronnie', ranging from Rob Macfarlane through Rowan Williams to Maggi Hambling. And no wonder, when he seems such wise and genial company, one of those rare souls who understands that "it takes an age to create one's own peerless dust and muddle." "Why do half the things we do, questioned Traherne, when one could sit under a tree?"

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn’t get through this. He never stops talking about god.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

As this is a compendium of Blythe's writing, I'm afraid I was a little lost with who people were, but I'm sure more avid fans will be very familiar with who's who. This book was with me for most of the year that's passed, and I know I'm going to miss those safe and reassuring words of his which may be worth a revisit sometime.

[Ruth Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

The nature writing was superb and his knowledge is wide and fascinating, but I didn’t realise that there was a substantial portion referencing church and the church year.

[Patrick]

My spring gardening audiobook soundtrack. It worked ok for that but I won't finish it. Pleasing to listen to Blythe's ruminations on traditional bucolic life in the English countryside. A world set apart from time. My interest waned after the spring chapters. Better to have this in hard copy and flip open to some pages every now and then throughout the year.

[Andy Helliwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book in all respects. A lifetime of reflections on faith, nature and literature. Very calming and engrossing reading.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were many nuggets of gold but like the real thing, they had to be found amidst the "rest". In short this book needed a hefty edit before marketing. The essays were often covering identical events in the year, perhaps from different years but often not.

I was a fan of Ronald Blythe's column in the Church Times for many years but , collected together his pieces come over as a bit precious with the incessant literary allusions and celebrities popping in for luncheon.

However there were some worthwhile comments on modern ways and the loss of familiar spiritual expression around and about. I was struck by the frequency of burst waterways - depressed actually - as this weather has become entrenched throughout much of Britain now.

So, somewhat surprised by my negative response.... another disappointment.

[Robin Hargreaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve come very late to Ronald Blythe
This book separated into Monthly segments is just a delight. A nature diary, a reflection on changing rural life over the period from the Second World War, and a commentary on a deeply dedicated man of the church. I would not normally select anything with a religious theme but this warm and transparently kind man reminds me of chapel in my Dales upbringing. All about unfussy rituals and fellowship and none of the preachyness that might put you off.
The love of nature, the land, the creatures in the surrounding fields and trees meshes seamlessly with an encyclopaedic command of the back story to everything and the rhythms of the country churches.
It’s just a lovely read.

[Andy Horton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I realised that I was starting this a year pretty much to the day after Blythe died. I decided to read a chapter a month through the year, as it is laid out.
A lovely writer. Idiosyncratic, self-contained but full of empathy for others. His scholarship and sense of history locates his writing in a deep continuum of place and community, and his faith and religious practice also run through this. Above all, he had an eye and ear for the rural world around him and the natural world of which we are a part.
I have loved this journey through a year, a life, the centuries and millennia, with Ronald Blythe. I shall enjoy dipping back in and re-reading passages, I know.
He has been with me on my journey this year, too.

[Geoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

These are the sweet, rambling thoughts of a contemporary English minister (circa 2022), covering a calendar year month by month. Half the time I had no idea what he was going on about, as he name-dropped everyone from obscure English poets to obscure local parishioners, and covered topics ranging from the Anglican liturgical calendar to outdated farming methods. But it was all so lovely, and just so ENGLISH, that I hardly minded. I will say that it definitely dragged on too long, though. I would have enjoyed the whole book more if he had cut his chapters in half.

[Alison Peters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a book to read just a couple pages a day (book is divided by months). I loved his descriptions of the land, birds, bugs, farm animals, neighbors and friends, weather, his trips and walks, subject matter of his preaching at the various churches, state of the farms by season, church celebrations, etc. Definitely a keeper to read again all throughout the year.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted so much to like this. I should have liked it. However, to my sadness, I just didn’t find it very readable. There are some lovely passages and overall Ronald Blythe is an immense figure in his field but this is best reserved for those who share his Christian ways as first and foremost this is a book about his day to day religious thoughts.

[Liselotte Banfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an amazing book. Ronald Blythe was a great writer who managed to come up with beautifully evocative descriptions, or a turn of phrase that would suddenly bring back long forgotten memories. I certainly felt myself back in the two very small villages I’ve lived in as he describes his own life at Bottengoms. Beautiful but a slow read.

[Susie · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at p.390 the incessant religious preaching and reciting bible verse was incredibly off-putting. I enjoyed the start of the book more as there was more nature content.
I loved the heartfelt words by friends at the beginning of each month, a real testament to a man who clearly meant a lot to many people.

[Adrian Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ronald Blythe seems incapable of writing anything dull, cold or pedestrian. Some of his passages are as good as the best of poetry, and invite immediate re-reading. What a gift he is. Fortunate for us that he lived so long and wrote so much. Love him.

[Tailsmo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a beautiful book, which made me feel so lucky to live in England and to have the privilege of reading. I read this over the course of the year, month by month, and will certainly do so again. It also made me want to read the poetry of John Clare and look at the paintings of John Nash.

[Karen Floyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A year's worth of readings from the non fiction works of the late Ronald Blythe, arranged by month, and introduced by his friend the writer and naturalist Richard Mabey. Additionally, each month is introduced by other British writers.

[Chris Hutchison-Hounsell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes thought-provoking. Sometimes unintelligible.

[Angus Slater · Rating 5 out of 5]

A charming book, a moving memoir of a life spent in deep appreciation of nature

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful book that deserves to be dipped into for refreshment day to day. A joyous mix of nature, faith and celebration of life.

[Ally Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars